Our cell
by crazychick16
Summary: You were sort of scruffy when I first saw you, scared and fragile. You didn't deserve any of this, I knew very well. Haven was hell and now you were stuck in it. You don't know me, but I promise to at least keep the nightmares away while you sleep. Jak and OC relationship, not love, just platonic and bonding. (second version, first version got deleted while writing it, very sad)


It's been a very long time since i've posted something, and even longer since i've played the old Jak and Daxter games. The first game came out when i was just 6, that was in 2001, it is now 2014 and at the age of 19 I find myself reminiscing upon my childhood and these games. The second games and the first more or less make my heart clench, and after reading some good fics here, ones even that haven't been updated for years, it drives me to at least make this. Even work didn't distract me from thinking of this.

So i hope you all enjoy this little piece. the pov is second person, so it's the narrator speaking from their own position, if that makes sense. I hope you all like this or not, i don't much mind. Read and review, i don't know if i will keep making stories but if i get enough good feedback i'll keep going. have a good night everyone.

Song(s) of inspiration of the night- Utada Hikaru-Sakura nagashi (evangalion 3.0), Neverland-nano

I still remember how it all began. I had been serving just over 8 years in the krimson guard, after forcing my way through the training and beating the hell out of all my other team trainees, I finally got my position into going above ground into the streets to patrol. I'd never seen what it was like outside the training rooms or the prison itself, i'd grown up my entire life there with my father who was a corporal under Praxis's rule. He told me stories constantly of the outside, filling me with wonder and curiosity to see it all.

That same day I was promoted to guard i got my facial tattoos, proving i'd shown my worth to the cause, the cause that let others know that I belonged to Praxis, his force on the outside where he couldn't be. I saw my helmet for the first time and felt the warmth in my chest burn so hot i thought I may fall over from being to hot. It was so exciting to finally be going outside. I was not prepared enough for it.

Terrible. No amount of training or stories were enough to give me enough sane support of what I saw. The sun was high in sunrise, making the metal of the city shine, but the shine was dull, horribly so.

The outside was disgusting, I hated it. Not the outside itself, but the environment and state of the city. I remember cringing and wrinkling my nose in disgust at how pungently revolting the air smelled, how the water looked, even the sight of starving citizens just sitting in the slums. They did nothing when we would walk by them

-'One day my daughter, you will see the outside world and haven's great people. don't be deterred by what you see, those who appose Praxis will suffer for their insolence and pay accordingly.' Father lied to me.

Father lied to me, everything was wrong, tainted and twisted into some grotesque version of what once had been great stories. People were dying and I had to watch as my fellow brother and sister guards murdered citizens for no reason other than suspicion of perhaps thinking of going to the underground or being part of it. More than half the time the ground was red at my feet with even bone fragments inside of the puddles. I'd vomited more than a few occasion, that made my squad mates laugh and call me squeamish.

I had been horrified to think that anyone who would become ill at such a sight of beating would be called squeamish because of it. That was years ago though. after my many years of serving, seeing all the death and carnage of the corrupt city, yet doing nothing to stop it all, i'd simply stopped caring, because if I had, i'd do something to make it all worse for me. Shoot myself maybe, that thought had crawled into my thoughts plenty throughout patrolling the city.

That's when I heard of you for the first time. Praxis had sent my squad out with Errol, a pretentious prick who'd always wanted everyone in the city dead. All he'd ever cared about was his own status as the best man next to the Barren. We had all been briefed on what was going to happen. A young man would appear in the city dressed strangely. I questioned none of it, but I should have.

My thoughts had been elsewhere. After hours of waiting and nothing occurred I got fed up and told Errol i'd be going with another squad to patrol, he had simply grunted and told me to get my ass out of there if I couldn't handle the type of mission that it was. After leaving and becoming well acquainted with my new squad our old routine set in. More beating, more death, nothing changed. I changed that.

I pulled my gun on my other guards, my mind was completely blank other than just wanting them to feel what they had been pushing onto other people for years. They didn't like it what I did. That cost me everything I had, but even so, I found myself not caring, even feeling like i'd done something at least memorable while they knocked me unconscious in the streets.

The old women in the bazaar was wrong too. She predicted you would be there that day. But you weren't. I sat in my cell for a long time before you'd finally been taken in. I still remember you being thrown into my cell, none to kindly, and locked inside. You were so innocent looking, blue eyes wide with fear and confusion. You looked at me like a frightened puppy while I only watched you with dull yellow eyes that held little interest.

As days passed us by in that small room I often wondered where you'd been hiding that left you so innocent. Haven was a hellish nightmare city come to life. So where had you been where you were able to run around carefree? You never told me, but that was because you could not talk, at least you never said anything to me. You were a lucky boy. I guessed you were 15 at the time when you first arrived here, a bad time to still be blissfully ignorant to the atrocities of the real world.

"Get him out of there, start him on the program." Errol grabbed you from the room after your third week of occupying my cell, taking you off to someplace I didn't know. I heard the screams though, they sounded painful and filled with terror. I sat on my bunk, the only bunk available, just listening to them, later finding out they belonged to you.

Each time they returned you to my cell you were crying and huddled yourself into a corner, arms covering your ears and head down. I felt sad for you. I came over to you shortly after that, nearly a foot taller than you as I stood over you. I'd thrown my blanket over you with a pillow and took my place back on the empty and naked bunk.

You were quiet after that.

That very next day I found you curled up on the floor with the blanket clutched tight and the pillow underneath your head. There were more screams, hours of it. They pushed you back into our cell again, your arms and face bleeding with cuts. I never asked you where they came from, and you never protested when I would clean them as best I could with the water from the sink, only let me do that then walk off to lie down again, leaving you to sit in the corner.

It was one cold night that I could hear your teeth chattering with the cold that I decided something had to change. "Get up here." I told you tiredly. At first you looked afraid I may turn and hurt you, which surely anyone else would have done that, but after minutes of eyeing me you finally got up and came to lie beside me on the bed.

I tucked us up neatly in the small blanket that forced us to be chest to breast. I remember tucking your head underneath mine as you slowly began to fall asleep as our small conjoined space started to fill with our body heat. After you had fallen prey to sleep did I decide to look you over for signs of harm. Despite being out of puberty and a young man months rough sleep, hardly eating, and experiments were taking their toll and I could see your frailty.

Sleeping together on the same bunk so close became more of a habit than routine. My bunk soon became our bunk, my pillow was our pillow, my blanket was your blanket. I say yours because when you were sleeping I would get out of it and tuck you into it, giving you all the comfort and warmth I could give in this situation you were placed in. You deserved a whole lot more than I did.

Months of forced cohabitation wore on us pretty much right away. When the guards would throw you into the room every day you would huddle into the corner and cry until your eyes were puffy and nose dribbling. Enough was enough. I had sat next to you and pulled you to sit between my legs and put your head to my chest, whispering hushed words of safety into your ears. Finally after minutes of that you broke down completely and clutched onto me like I was your new lifeline, and maybe I was, thinking back on it now.

Weeks would pass and sometimes you were bold all on your own. You would come to me and push my arms away from my legs and move between them to lean against me and listen to my heart as it beat. The sound of someone alive and cared was enough to at least keep someone going. That became a ritual of ours too. you pushing my arms aside and myself letting you sit there against me whenever you so chose to do it. You were a stubborn brat but you always got what you wanted in the end didn't you?

We got closer throughout that first year. When one of us would go to sleep the other would follow right behind, lying down just beside the other close just to feel comfort. You seem to have needed lots of that stuff. I was glad to be tribute to be the one you desperately needed to lean on. You were so young.

Once the first year of being roommates passed I was grateful for how close we'd become. I could tell you stories of my childhood and sometimes you would laugh and others you would become sad. I would hush you and kiss your head, telling you that you didn't need to be sad for me for that was just the past and behind me. when you were just 16 I gave you the only present I could. My trust.

I let you know everything about me, my past and more, my training, my life, and my plan to get you the fuck out of the prison that they held you in. You didn't like that either, the escaping that is. You shook your head furiously and butted it against mine as if defiantly defying me the right to try and plan to get you out. It was dangerous to think something like that was possible. So I let it go.

On more than one occasion we'd become very protective of each other. Guards would come unannounced and rip you from our bed and I'd get up to beat the shit out of them as best I could, being starved i still put up a good fight. They would leave and you would come to sit near me, rubbing at my scratches and bruises, whimpering slightly with some quiet sobs. I only smiled at you, telling you, "it's alright kid, I won't let them hurt you more than they already do." On rare occasions you would even gather some random bout of strength and attack the guards with me when they would get me on the ground under their boots.

You even would smile at me with bloodied teeth and help me sit up. Praxis didn't like that we were beating up his guards and he would ration our food, try and force us to give in and be obedient. We would get two plates of food, one for me and one for you. My plate was still given more food, praxis's way of bribing me to go back to his side and be one of his best guards. I didn't have any of that. I would give it mostly to you anyway. Every time I offered you my plate you would tell me no silently and push it back to me.

wW had that little fight every day didn't we? I would convince you to take my food for yourself. "Take it, Jak, you need this more than I do, I've survived on less." Your name had been sweet on my tongue. The first time I heard Errol say it I knew he wasn't even the smallest bit worthy enough to say it. I'd come to think of you like a younger brother believe it or not, the idea was quite fancied in my thoughts. The protective instincts over you, giving you my food when i was more inclined to be greedy than giving, fighting guards who dared try and harm you. You were precious to me i realized.

You were something I could actually protect a little bit and respond to my actions. It was on a quiet night when I was stroking your hair that an old lullaby my mother had once sung to me had come to mind. I explained how i wanted to sing it to you and so I did. You liked it a lot, pushing on my chest every time I asked if you wanted to hear it again.

I did that every night before we went to sleep, it was almost nice. Almost.

Eighteen months had passed and by then I began to feel ill. After giving you most of my food to keep you relatively healthy looking, and even taking a few experiment days by bashing some guards, I started to notice my body wear down. I was dying by eco poisoning. I didn't tell you though, it would make you upset if you knew what was going on. I wasn't able to channel eco like you could do, even the green eco was more than what I could take on. Mostly i would lay in bed, cold and feverish. Jak, you would do all you could to make me feel better and I was glad you were there to try.

Try and fail was better than to not try at all. Then your nightmares got worse. You would wake up screaming and I would have to force you down as best I could on your back to force you to wake up, wake up and realize that I was there with you, keeping you safe while you tried to at least sleep. I failed in that mission though, even when sleeping you were still haunted and caged.

"I'm sorry Jak." I whispered over and over again while stroking your back. "I'm sorry I can't protect you." As much as I wish I could have, the matter of the fact was I was dying and I wouldn't be there to keep you company in this evil place anymore. So I sang to you more and more, during the day, after the guards returned you to me, during the night when you would writhe in bed from night terrors.

The anniversary of our two year friendship was around the corner. I was brushing your hair out with my fingers gently so as not to pull and hurt your scalp. It had grown so very long with no care to cut it and no means of cutting it like scissors. Your face had sharpened too, a strong jawline, dark hard eyes to match that permanent scowl on your face, you were going to be a little shit later in life I just knew it. You threw my hand away from you that day, do you remember? You had pushed me onto my back and grabbed my throat tight while I was pinned.

Nothing is what I did. I let you have that littlest bit of control. The dark eco was affecting your behavior badly the more they had you under those contraptions above the holding chair. Normally you would snap out of it within minutes and I would lie there motionless and expressionless until you would come back to me and sob into my chest again, mumbling barely audible apologies.

"Don't you ever apologize to me about anything." I would tell you on more than one occasion. "You owe me no apologies kid" Why did I tell you this you may wonder. Because to me you my adopted sibling, the younger sibling I always wished i could have so I could protect them from all the bad things in life. You weren't my brother though, that was alright too, because I wasn't your sister. We had just become close friends who met up with some exceptional circumstances.

That night was warmer than usual it was so nice to feel the heat. You'd grown well into your age, your looks too. If ever you got out of here and were able to find yourself a girl she would be a damn lucky chick, and she better damn well treat you like the treasure you were.

Morning came to soon with a rude awakening. "Get him." Errol burst into our cell, electrode prods pointed at me in case I dared to try and fight the guards again. They ripped you from my arms, I screamed in protest but they fell on deaf ears. I was alone again, left to hear you scream for hours again on end as they tortured you more.

"I thought you said this one would be different!" Praxis sounded angry, I smiled at his dissatisfaction, he didn't deserve to have things go his way.

"I'm afraid the dark warrior program has failed." Errol trailed close to Praxis as he walked, i could barely see you outside of the small window of our cell, you looked so tired, and ready to give up on everything. "The metal head armies are pressing their attacks, my men cannot hold out forever."

Praxis grabbed your head and wrenched it up to look at him. "You should at least be dead with all the dark eco I pumped into you." But you didn't die, you survived, damaged but alive. They left then, leaving you in the chair with the thoughts about being dead within a few hours. Something came to help you, I could hear a voice call your name, begging you to speak.

For the first time since I met you I heard your voice. It was rough, firm and full of anger. You claimed you would kill praxis, Jak you had become so consumed. That was expected though wasn't it.

You changed into something I will never be able to describe. You turned into your nightmares, dark evil and ready to kill. You stopped again, returning to normal. Your friend told you to get dressed, that you would be leaving. I did manage to get to my knees and look at you through the bars, your eyes, sad and dull, looked at me and I smiled to you.

Mouthing a simple 'You're free' Urging you silently to go without me. I couldn't be of help out there, i couldn't protect you out there. You didn't need me anymore for that, your friend was there, he could be that emotional support that I provided for a short time. Jak you were free to go without me. So you left me behind in our cell, lying in the blanket that had once cradled both of us during the nights.

"Be a good boy." I said into the pillow where our heads would rest. I slept silently that night, and guess what Jak? I didn't have to wake up the next day to your screams. I wasn't in our cell anymore after I woke up. Be a good boy for me will you.

Don't you cause to much trouble.

"...Get that body out of that cell. The eco freak is gone, and she's dead, get the corpse out of here before it attracts more rats." Errol scowled and watched as the guards grudgingly removed the body of a young woman. "Seems not everyone can handle eco very well."


End file.
